1.0: You May Not Be The Heroes We Need...
Otherwise knows as, "In which the DM forgives his wife for taking forever to upload her quest notes because she fills in ALL the missing quest periods with bullet points to the best of her ability (including his!), and is actually eternally grateful to her for it and owes her a fancy box of chocolates even though it's not Valentine's Day." :) Ahem. * The party gathers in Kazamara for the highly-anticipated Night of the Melting Frost as individuals...but spoiler alert they will leave AS ONE (*sniffle* so beautiful). * All of their names have already been entered into the drawing for chance to ask a question of Astor's priest that will be answered truthfully, an honor that has not happened in 100 years, though some of them were entered without their knowing (see the 0: Pre-campaign Collaboration page for details on all that business). * Caireann has no more money left but wanders the stalls of the fair until the ceremony. * Timmeron is busy with family affairs up until the ceremony. * Sal is swindled out of almost all the money he earned performing on "someone else's street corner" in the most goodnaturedly way possible (it's kind of painful to watch). * Travize tries to avoid being beat up for being part of the Collective by a drunken Dwarf named Dorn, who "lost" his son to the Collective. * Baygrith is trying to hawk his wares, like he do. * Sajaina is taking everything in, wide-eyed, on the arm of her brother-in-law Ithal, who is so fed up with her getting into trouble already and it's only the second day of their illegal "vacation." * Grukk and Perlapae, who travelled together, separate at the fair as Perlapae is distracted by whirlybobs and Grukk is pulled into a fighting ring. Grukk gets paired up against an undefeated champion and starts getting his ass beat, but Sajaina, spectating with Ithal, notices that the "champion" is using magic to cheat and thinks it'd be a good idea to jump on the ropes of the ring and loudly call him out on it. * The champion yells at her and kind of flings her back, but he ends up disqualified and Grukk still beats him up. Grukk wins, Sajaina pays a gold piece to shake his hand and then he offers to buy her a drink. Ithal chaperones, of course. * The Astor ceremony begins and one by one the party is selected to be the "Chosen of Astor." Some other guy is also chosen, this Human named Marcon, who is part of some annoying twat organization that gets together and tries to scientifically guess the best questions to ask Astor and revel in their mutual twattery or something. He might be dead now. * The Drunken Dorn is furious when he hears Travize's name called and tries to attack him again, but this time Travize turns himself into a bear and the Dwarf soils himself, as the rest of the crowd (and party) gapes at bear-Travize. * Caireann is selected to lead the party and the magic shield she hands people to test their identity lights someone on fire who pretends to be Baygrith Blackrock (but is obviously not), because THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LIE, GUYS. DON'T DO IT. * Ithal kind of freaks out (okay a lot freaks out) and refuses to let Sajaina go with the others because he's smarter than everyone else, but Sajaina begs him because it's a once in a lifetime opportunity and Sal, who studied with Ithal during his time training at Sharr Marivah, promises to keep her safe on the journey. Eventually Ithal caves and agrees to wait for her return in Kazamara. * The party meets up with their guides, 2 guards and a Gnomish paladin of Astor named Riskatour. They get lots of religious lectures on the way up and magical party members share magic knowledge while non-magic party members say fuck that shit and spar. Also at some point Sajaina steals this religious amulet off Riskatour while he's sleeping to see if she can (she can). He's really, really upset about it in the morning because it has some sentimental value so Sajaina feels guilty and puts it back the next night. Riskatour is suspicious of everyone the rest of the trip and Travize somehow figures out what happened and gives Sajaina one of his first of many disapproval points to come. * They get to Astor's temple at the top of the mountain and Perlapae points out something she needs to take and give to her goddess Viti in exchange for some of the magic she'd helped her perform. Sajaina makes a note to help her with that later. They all ask their questions of the priest, who looks very young although he is supposedly quite old. He responds in a trance-like state with a monotonous voice. * Caireann asks about her potential as a fighter. * Grukk asks about something in Orcish that only one other party member speaks Orcish and understands. * Baygrith asks in Dwarven how to preserve a soul's life after death and his given a cryptic answer implying only Steave would know this. * Perlapae asks what will make Viti talk to her like she does for every other Laputi. She's told Sajaina can't meet Steave in the next 6 months or Viti will never talk to Perlapae. * Marcon asks something annoying but looks really smug about it. * Sajaina asks where the Maharaja will be one week from today. * Travize asks something that elicits a response that kind of makes the party freak out a bit. Apparently if he dies the world goes to shit or something? * Timmeron VERY RELUCTANTLY gives up his question in order to ask for some further clarity on that matter...sort of gets it? I don't know why this stuff is fuzzy for me, any help would be much appreciated. * I have no idea what happened with Sal's question either. I'm sure this is all written down by someone better than me in every way. * People start fighting. Timmeron starts lecturing Travize on how he needs to protect himself for the fate of the world. Sajaina doesn't like all the yelling. She slips out of the room to try and help Perlapae out and snatch the chalice Viti wants. It goes okay until she gets trapped in a net she couldn't step around in time. She is rescued by an Astor Disciple and sweet-talks her way out of explaining what really happened. * The party is shown to their rooms for the night--they will travel back down the mountain in the morning. * Sajaina, Perlapae and Travize go together this time to try and get the chalice, though Travize highly disapproves. This time Sajaina does better, gets to the chalice...but then falls into the net on her way back from it, chalice in hand. * Perlapae rushes to her side to free her before the alerted priests come to the trap, but she just can't get her fingers to do the things they need to do. Sajaina hands Perlapae the chalice and begins to cut her own way out with her dagger, but cuts too deep and falls through the net, dangling from a quickly tearing piece. Perlapae can drop the chalice into the pit or help pull Sajaina up and she chooses to keep the chalice her goddess requested. Sajaina plummets into what is luckily a deep underground pool at the bottom of the pit. But she can't swim. AHHHH THE SUSPENSE OH WAIT I CAN JUST GO READ THE NEXT QUEST'S NOTES WEEEEE RETROACTIVITY!! Category:Quests